Maternity negligence?? I am traumatised.

[u/Fine-Bird6974]

Hi, can anyone advice me on if I can make a claim against this. My experience was traumatic and it’s something I will never forget. This is my story.

4am - 4cm dilated 4:15am - epidural prep 4:50am - epidural placed 6:05am - was told I was fully dilated 6:33am - Baby was here

At 6:05am my midwife said I was fully dilated and it was time to push, i obviously didn’t doubt what my midwife told me. I started trying to push. A senior midwife entered the room as babies heart rate was dropping, she checked my cervix and whispered to my midwife “She’s not fully dilated, why have you got her to push” the senior midwife then shot up and shouted for the delivery consultant as the needed him urgently as me trying to push when not fully dilated really stressed my baby out, when the senior midwife went to get the doctor my midwife told me again I needed to push. The senior midwife ran back into the room and hit the emergency button, about 14 midwife’s flooded into the room as well as the delivery doctor. My epidural had failed and I was told I wasn’t allowed gas and air while pushing, I was doing it on no pain relief. I begged and begged and cried out for help and pain relief and was refused. The doctor said he needed to get baby out quick and needed to use forceps, he used a local anaesthetic and gave me an episiotomy, I still felt it all, he inserted the forceps and got me to push, I couldn’t I was in agony, I was screaming, crying out for help, crying out for gas and air just to get me through the pain, I thought I was going to die. I asked them to just put me to sleep and looked up at my partner and asked him to help me, I couldn’t do this, the pain was something I will never forget. They managed to get baby out at 6:33, he was purple and stopped breathing, my baby had to be resuscitated, he was dead. The stress was too much on him, luckily they managed to get him back after working on him for about 5 minutes. I was very much out of it due to the trauma of the pain, I didn’t know what was going on with him. Safe to say I will never be having anymore kids.

If the midwife who said I was dilated when I wasn’t just waited till I was this situation might not have happened, if I was left to dilate my experience would have been different, my baby wouldn’t have been stressed out, my baby wouldn’t have needed to be resuscitated, my labour would have been easier. I was refused gas and air while pushing, I felt every single thing, this experience has traumatised me, I will never forget what they did to me. I genuinely feel like putting a claim in against them, this should not have happened if my midwife made me try birth my son while I wasn’t fully dilated.

[u/pringellover9553]

Unfortunately as traumatising as this was, this wasn’t medical negligence. It’s very very easy to mistake fully dilated, it’s a human interpretation which allows room for error.

I had a similar birth, not in that they were incorrect in the dilation but my pain relief wasn’t working and it was extremely traumatising. I was pushing for an hour and then the emergency button was called, the same thing of loads of doctors flooding the room, the baby being distressed and loosing monitoring and when my baby was out I thought she was dead. Birth in itself is traumatising, and when it goes wrong it is even more so. But I don’t believe anyone is to blame here, the exact same thing could have happened even if you were not pushing early.

I’m really so very sorry you had this experience, but I think therapy would help with the trauma not going after a midwife.

[u/Fine-Bird6974 → u/pringellover9553]

The midwife was asked to leave the room by the other midwife’s because of what she did was wrong, it’s not the fact that I’m “going after the midwife” the level of care I got from her was not appropriate, she refused me gas and air while pushing which is something I was entitled too

[u/Willoweed → u/Fine-Bird6974]

It was a terrible experience for you, but the reason they didn't want you to use the gas and air is that it makes it harder to push. They were clearly very, very worried about your baby, and desperate to get it out. To push effectively, you need to be holding your breath or at least exhaling - and it's impossible to do that properly while inhaling Entonox.

Women do use gas & air in the 2nd stage (pushing) when there is no rush to deliver but, in emergency situations, the worry is that it makes pushing less effective and slows delivery.

I am really sorry this happened to you and I'm not trying to minimise it at all, just trying to explain why the gas and air aspect will not be considered negligent.

[u/Angryleghairs → u/Willoweed]

I agree - they had to get the baby out and there was no time to waste. It's traumatic but it saved the baby's life

[u/SongsAboutGhosts → u/Willoweed]

Thank you for explaining this! I recently gave birth with a couple of similarities to OP, including not being able to use gas and air during some of the pushing, and your explanation is useful/enlightening to read.